Cervantes: Don Quixote (Volume C)

Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616)

• multi-faceted, son of apothecary

• adventurer• Madrid• Rome, 1569• Battle of Lepanto,

1571• imprisonment and

ransom (1580)

Philip II

• Habsburg monarch• “prudent king” • 1580, imperialism• gold and inflation• England, 1588

Counter-Reformation

• religious orthodoxy• humanist reform• conversos• Moriscos• Cervantes’s heritage

• prologue

• picaro

• caricature, dark comedy

• social class

• morality

• dreams, hallucinations, the fanciful

Picaresque

Don Quixote

Feudalism

• Spanish golden age• “Age of Expansion”• Habsburgs• imperialism• inflation• Spanish Inquisition,

1516• pesantry

Foil

Love“O Princess Dulcinea, lady of this captive heart! Much wrong have you done me in thus sending me forth with your reproaches and sternly commanding me not to appear in your beauteous presence. O lady, deign to be mindful of this your subject who endures so many woes for the love of you” (p. 396).

“Seeing now that the combat was over and the knight was returning to mount Rocinante once more, he went up to hold the stirrup for him; but first, he fell on his knees in front of him and, taking his hand, kissed it, and said, “May your Grace be pleased, Señor Don Quixote, to grant me the governorship of that island which you have won in this deadly affray” (p. 422).

Dramatic Irony

What important morals does Quixote glorify throughout the text? For example, based on the history you have learned about Cervantes’s period, how does Quixote feel about property ownership, slavery, and marriage?

Discussion Questions

Is reading dangerous? What do you make of the conclusion when Quixote alters his will such that his niece will not inherit unless she renounces the reading of chivalric tales?

Discussion Questions

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The Norton AnthologyOof World Literature